Ask 100 marketing types about anything, get 100 different opinions. This is mine.

Hello world: Let’s chase some waves.

“So this is a blog about marketing and stuff. Yes… another one.”

I wrote that four years ago as the first line of the first post of one of the many blogs I started with enthusiasm and no tenacity. That post now sits cyber grave-yard gradually gathering pixel-dust. But when I popped back to re-read that blog, the content still fits nicely as the seminal post of this one.

So rather than write something new. Here’s something a few years old that still makes sense – cos nothing much has significantly changed:

So this is a blog about marketing and stuff. Yes.. another one. But rather than celebrate the best of now or remember all those good ads from the past, the plan here is to talk about interesting changes and what advertising might look like tomorrow.

And who would know? I certainly don’t.

But I’m interested in where things are at, how fast they’re changing and what kind of stuff is affecting that change. It’s fascinating. Well I think it is.

And as I read stuff and find stuff and witter to anyone who’ll listen, I discover that most of my friends are bored of it. So I figured I’d jot things here instead.

Here’s the thing. I reckon I have the best job in the world. But I’m keen to do it for another twenty years or so. And the way things are going, there’s every chance that it might end up retiring me before I’m really ready to retire it.

So that’s why I’m thinking about tomorrow.

Right now everyone is chasing waves, trying stuff out and constantly claiming success in the next ‘big thing’. But in the chaos of the surf, buffeted by the reality of starbursts and sales, it’s kinda hard to get a clear picture.

So I figured that if start put stuff up here and link in to what other people think, then maybe other people will add their point of view and together we can get a better idea of what tomorrow might be like.

In a way, it’s a Google thing. See, somehow Google always seem to hit on the next big thing before anyone even knew that the next big thing was coming. That’s exactly what we try to do pretty much every time we sell stuff. So how does Google do it?

According to Paul Graham (as quoted in Chris Anderson’s ‘Long Tail’):

“Google doesn’t try to force things to happen their way. They try to figure out what’s going to happen, and arrange to be standing there when it does.”

So that’s a long-winded way of saying why I’m writing. Let’s take what we learn from chasing waves, put it together with what thinkers think about changing worlds and maybe we’ll be well placed to catch the big advertising wave of tomorrow.

Or maybe it’s just another marketing blog full of random wittering and ill-founded opinion. Either way, welcome.